Modern websites are often constructed using a collection of reusable components, sometimes referred to as “widgets,” “portlets,” and “plug-ins.” These components are designed to be relatively easy for web developers or end users to plug in the components into a website. For example, websites such as My Yahoo!, available from Yahoo!, Inc., or iGoogle, available from Google, Inc., allow users to customize their home page by plugging in various widgets that provide access to such features as an email inbox, stock quotes, sports scores, news feeds, etc. Conventional widgets are typically designed to allow the webpage in which they are contained (e.g., its “parent page”) to dictate the widgets' rendering style. Such widgets are designed to be brand neutral to allow the widget to visually accommodate a variety of websites. In some cases, this brand neutrality is implemented using Cascading Style Sheet (“CSS”) rules that display a widget according to pre-defined coding or style rules, for example, as defined by a CSS style attribute assigned to its parent page.